Last week, tens of thousands of Paraguayans were out in the streets of the capital, culminating a ten consecutive day protest against the government’s Public-Private Partnerships, or APP legislation.

This followed a general strike in March demanding higher wages, better labour protections, a stronger social welfare system, and an end to privatizations schemes like the APP. But Paraguay is just one Latin American country trending back towards oligarchic corporatocracy. It wasn’t meant to be that way, Paraguay has a progressive, former priest as leader, but in 2012 his hopes, and those of the poor majority in the country were dashed by a coup – a coup Canada supported.

As in Haiti, and Honduras, and Egypt, and Afghanistan, and the former Ukraine, Stephen Harper likes corpo-fascists, and doesn’t mind at all the coups that bring them to power.

What Harper and his minders in Washington don’t like however is democracy; especially a democracy with an eye to serving any other than the interests of that tiny sliver of the people constituting the crème de la crème of the elite; as in Venezuela. Venezuela is squarely in the gunboat sights of Mr. Obama, and his useful quislings in Ottawa, just as it was for the Pope of Hope’s predecessor, George W. Bush.

Asad Ismi is an award-winning journalist and radio documentary producer focused on Yankee imperialism in the Global South and the resistance there to it. The international affairs correspondent for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ news magazine Monitor, Asad recently published, ‘Canada and the US Go Digging for Regime Change in Venezuela.’

Asad Ismi in the first half.

And; the prospect of the USAPatriot Act’s demise in the United States over the weekend had some hoping for real change in the surveillance state created since the 9/11 attacks. That optimism is dimming now with the quick passage of the Freedom Act, a faux effort at reforming the egregious original. In Canada things are even worse, with Bill C-51 poised to sail through the rump senate on its way to easy ratification. C-51 is what the Patriot Act would have liked to become, if only American law would allow it. What that means for Canadians is a future lived in the Panopticon, where every move you make is monitored, every call you place recorded, every notion you utter scrutinized for thought crimes. But, there is push back on C-51, and its authors.

David Christopher is Communications Manager with OpenMedia.ca, the nation-wide community organization that is trying to “safeguard the possibilities of the open Internet.” OpenMedia, in concert with a number of concerned Canadian organizations, has enjoined the fight against the Harperites with ‘Canada’s Privacy Plan: A Crowdsourced Agenda for Tackling Canada’s Privacy Deficit’

David Christopher in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher emeritus and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will not be with us today, as business calls her away. So first up, Asad Ismi and Canada and the US digging away at Venezuela’s democracy.

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